Culture Shock and White Out, By Joey Ridge

Joey Ridge

"Culture Shock and White Out"

You think that you know "Japanese", but really you don't.


When you do get to Japan, and hear that gibberish spoken for real.

You won't even be able to say you know SOME Japanese!


You know what? I actually think it's better for you to go knowing nothing.


Then you'd be starting at zero. Not going backwards like I was...


I thought that I knew a little Japanese.


And tried so hard to hold onto what I had I couldn't learn anything else.


Add to that living in Japan, with all the people everywhere, and everything feels so tight and cramped.



Pretty soon the White-out was everywhere. It was like someone had gone into my head and left a trail of empty white splotches behind.



If I had known what it was really like in Japan, things would've been different.

An American Virgin in Japan, by Remi Klauser

Remi Klauser

"An American Virgin in Japan"

If, by the time you step off your 14 hour flight to Narita

or Kansai Airports in Japan, you still find yourself a virgin, don't worry.

You now find yourself Japan, the best possible place in the world to finally lose it!



This isn't like back home in America, despite what you've come to believe about yourself, in Japan you're different.


Here you're special, you're a commodity, you're a "GAIJIN".


Doesn't matter much whether you're into J-Girls,

or J-Guys, they'll all be into any kind of you.


And then after that, it's all up to you and what you do:

Will you finally figure out how to say the right things?

Will you live openly and only in the moment?

Will you ever be able to think about someone else?

Other than yourself?

Is LOVE too much for you?


The Japanese are waiting for you.

Capsule Hotels (I Chose To Be Japanese), By Alex Johnston

Alex on Capsule Hotels:

"I Chose To Be Japanese"

Whether you end up studying in Japan someday, or you never even get there, the odds you'll ever end up in a Capsule Hotel are STILL slim to none.

Doesn't matter if you're a student studying abroad in a remote rural village in the boonies of Wakayama.

Or a clueless, jet-lagged-out tourist at Akihabara, or a bored salaryman on a brief business trip in Roppongi Hills. Only very few will ever seek out sanctuary in a Capsule Hotel.

So, I won't bore you with "The Modern History of Compact Lodgings in Japan, and the Cultural Roles They've played in Shaping Japanese Society."

But, some of you may end up in a Capsule. At the end of a drunken dreary night, in Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo. An accident so you think, but really every moment in Japan had led you there fatigued, finally.

Inside the plastic-molded coccoon you fight back down the creeping of claustrophobia.

Barely roomier than a coffin, like being buried alive--only you're being born again.

When you flick off the mini track-light, a darkness so thick and imposing it doesn't stop, it envelopes you.

And then you can become someone else..

I chose to become Japanese.